Using a PDA

Introduction

• How do you plan to use the PDA device, now and in the future?
• How much can you afford to spend?
• After two or three years you may wish to upgrade to a newer, more powerful device

Medical Reference

• Drug database, drug interaction analyzer
• Medical reference tool, medical calculator
• Installing more than one or two medical programs may use up most of the devices memory
• How much information do you plan to store on the device?

Personal

• Calendar (Date Book)
• Address Book (Contacts)
• Things To Do (Tasks)
• NotePad (Memos)
• These functions require only a basic PDA model

Entertainment

• Games – many are available
• Taking and storing pictures
• Playing music
• These functions can use up memory and battery resources
• The digital cameras on most PDAs are very limited

Advanced Personal Use

• Word processor, spreadsheets, presentations, database
• Files may appear different on the smaller PDA display
• File transfer between PDA and desktop may cause loss of formatting
• May require faster processor and larger memory
• Consider an external keyboard if you plan to enter a lot of data by hand
• Pocket PCs can use Microsoft Office files without conversion
• Many Palm OS devices use the Documents To Go software to access MS Office files

Advanced Medical Use

• Multiple medical references
• Large medical references such as InfoRetriever or UpToDate
• Storing any patient information requires extra security measures
• InfoRetriever requires 64 megabytes of memory
• UpToDate requires a high capacity Compact Flash (CF) expansion slot